Does Celestia really needs 256 MB of video RAM?

General discussion about Celestia that doesn't fit into other forums.
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danielj
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Does Celestia really needs 256 MB of video RAM?

Post #1by danielj » 06.07.2005, 14:27

I saw several people running Doom 3 and other games with a Geforce 6600 GT 128 MB with all configurations in the maximum.Why does Celestia needs 256 MB of video memory?

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selden
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Post #2by selden » 06.07.2005, 14:41

Because you want to have all of your Addons loaded at the same time. Games are carefully programmed so they only use the memory that's available. You have to do the same with your Addons: decide which ones you want and which ones you don't want.
Selden

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t00fri
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Post #3by t00fri » 06.07.2005, 17:09

Daniel,

would it be too complicated for you to take a little pocket calculator (or your computer) and just calculate the biggest texture size that fits into 128MB of graphics RAM (without being chopped)?

Bye Fridger

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danielj
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Post #4by danielj » 06.07.2005, 17:17

I don??t know how to calculate exactly.
Let??s see...128 MB is 131072 kbytes,so the biggest texture would be 131072/8=16384 kbits or 16k texture(JPG or PNG texture).Is it right?
But what about DDS?

t00fri wrote:Daniel,

would it be too complicated for you to take a little pocket calculator (or your computer) and just calculate the biggest texture size that fits into 128MB of graphics RAM (without being chopped)?

Bye Fridger

doctorjoe
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Not to sound like a broken record.....

Post #5by doctorjoe » 06.07.2005, 22:17

But I really do want to put pressure on people to get my patches into the main branch.

One thing that my patches to is to split up the textures so that celestia can load in the textures as needed instead of all at once. With my patches, I get acceptable performance on my Dell C600 16Meg radeon card with level 5 earth virtual textures.

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fsgregs
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Post #6by fsgregs » 09.07.2005, 13:07

Dr. Joe:

Do you have a patch to Celestia's code that makes texture loading much more efficient? If so, was version 1.4.0pre 6 patched, or was an earlier version patched?

If your patch works well, could you compile it for Windows and make a copy of the application available for the rest of us on some website?

Thanks

Frank

doctorjoe
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Patch

Post #7by doctorjoe » 09.07.2005, 23:50

The patch is at

http://www.gnacademy.org/twiki/bin/view ... aExtension

it's against what is in CVS.

Unfortunately, I don't have a windows environment to build against.

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danielj
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Re: Patch

Post #8by danielj » 10.07.2005, 02:43

Maybe it??s a lack of optimization of the software,maybe I need a new video card.Maybe both things.
The fact is when I saw,for example,Titan,I can see it with >80 fps in 1024X768,4XAA and 2XAF,but when Saturn appears form behind,the frame rate can go to <20 fps.This is worst with the Moon and Mars,with its 16k textures.
I would happy if Celestia runs smoothly with 1280X1024 and at least 2xAA in planets with 16k VT or more,and not have jerky motions,when the screen become "crowded"


doctorjoe wrote:The patch is at

http://www.gnacademy.org/twiki/bin/view ... aExtension

it's against what is in CVS.

Unfortunately, I don't have a windows environment to build against.


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